


Washed Up on the Shore

by rufeepeach



Category: Once Upon A Time - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Rumbelle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-24
Updated: 2012-04-24
Packaged: 2017-11-04 06:15:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumpelstiltskin really hates mermaids.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Washed Up on the Shore

Mermaids give him a headache.

Rumpelstiltskin looks out over the ocean, and has the sudden, unbelievably stupid urge to just purge the whole sea of the damn things.

Three days: three days he’s been stuck here, in this damp little corner of the world. All he wants is to go home, dry off completely ( _he hasn’t been completely dry for days_ ) and forget this whole misadventure. If he never sees another shell again, it’ll be a hundred years too soon.

He looks down at the trumpet in his hands, his prize.

Mermaids, at least, are unlikely to read the small print. A small potion to keep their hair soft – if he ever meets a mermaid concerned with more, he’ll grant it to her free of charge – is a small price to pay.

Still, three days with only a group of oxygen-deprived teenage girls for company, and Rumpelstiltskin is badly in need of a decent conversation. He’s just staring at the waves where they meet the sand, his mind essentially blank and sleeping, when something catches his eye.

Rumpelstiltskin knows how to spot magic when it’s shouting at him: and in this, someone is screaming his name.

So he wanders down to it, expecting a summons from the Queen, or a desperate plea for assistance from some despairing princess. He could ignore the latter; he really, really hoped it wouldn’t be the former.

He picks up the bottle, and the magic radiating from the glass is friendly, warm and tingling: there is no malevolence in this charm, and he relaxes.

Then tenses - the magic is _familiar_ : it’s his own.

He forces himself to be calm, and pulls the message out:

_I’m afraid there was a small fire: I told you I was an accident waiting to happen! Everything is okay… but you might want to get back here soon. The kitchen is starting to smell weird._

_Belle._

__He can’t help but laugh. Of all the girls he could have bargained to be caretaker, he had to choose the one guaranteed to set his house on fire.

He’d planned to save some magic and walk home, call in on some hold acquaintances on the way, and inspire a little fear. But now, all he wanted was to be at home, with his incompetent housekeeper, in their utterly ruined kitchen.


End file.
